A tale of two parks

I promise this will not become a football blog. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ll have little else to say on football for awhile.

As part of our Good Times Program, we’ve been taking in some major league sports.

On Monday, we went and saw the evening football game in San Francisco (vs the New Orleans Saints). The game was very entertaining, and it was a true spectacle of Americana. From the pregame tailgating, to the bumper-to-bumper traffic through a neighborhood that had clearly suffered the “economic benefit” of a stadium, to the pregame pyrotechnics and fighter planes flying overhead during the national anthem (sung by Boyz II Men), it was all there. But Candlestick Park? You couldn’t pay me to ever go there again. Carrie and I simultaneously sunburned and freezing and it was as if the entire stadium’s design was an afterthought–after a lot of people got paid. It’s simultaneously hotter and colder than the outside, and full of empty spaces that could be put to better use, from the giant gaps beneath the stands to the weird configuration of seats around the field.

This is in stark contrast to AT&T Park, where we saw a Giants game last Tuesday. Yes, there was a cold breeze but it was nothing compared to Candlestick. Good food, good views, smart design and public transit easily accessible to and from the game. I guess I do like modern stadia better. I’d still vote against public funds for one, though.

One reply on “A tale of two parks”

In fairness … I know, there’s no such thing with that dump … some of the odd spaces and seat configurations come because it was originally built as a baseball stadium with no upper deck in the outfield (here’s how it looked when I was a kid: http://bss.sfsu.edu/tygiel/hist490/1950s60s/photos/stadiums/candold2.jpg). They completed the upper deck when the 49ers moved there (and, believe it or not, they moved from an even more crappy place, Kezar Stadium, which was featured in Dirty Harry). Now that the Giants are gone, Candlestick is sillier than ever, as you now know.